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On Monday, the latest findings and analysis by Canalys of worldwide smartphone purchases and shipments indicate that the iPhone has had a solid third quarter this year, becoming the best selling smartphone on the planet during this period. Although the collective bunch of phones running Android represented a larger market share (43.6%), Apple's lone iPhone captured an impressive 26.2%. The data coincides with Apple's freshly released quarterly earnings statement, in which the company acknowledged selling more than 14 million iPhones.

In the past, Apple has not only duked-it-out in the marketplace with the likes of Android, but they have also quarreled in terms of the "fuzy math" each has provided to boast of units sold, shipped, and now in active use. In October, however, Apple chief Steve Jobs was forced to concede that the iPhone was second to Android in the previous quarter. The latest data, conversely, indicates a swing in favor of Apple's iPhone - at least on a global scale with regard to smartphone sales.

Astoundingly, in Q3 2010, the worldwide smartphone market swelled 95% over the same quarter in 2009 to a staggering 80.9 million shipped units. "With Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson all delivering large numbers of Android devices, and with focused efforts from many other vendors, such as LG, Huawei and Acer, yielding promising volumes, the platform continues to gather momentum in markets around the world," Canalys Senior Analyst Pete Cunningham stated in the report.